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Jakarta holds embassy blast suspects

Indonesian police say they have arrested some suspects in the Australian embassy bombing, while a newspaper has identified one of them as allegedly being linked to the 2002 Bali bombings and last year's attack on the JW Marriott hotel.

25 Nov 2004 14:19 GMT

Australia's embassy in Jakarta was attacked on 9 November

Rois, alias Iwan Darmawan, was reportedly arrested on 10 November at a railway

station on the western tip of Java island, the report said on Tuesday.

Police did not publicise the arrest while they confirmed the suspect's identity, the report said.

But when asked about the report, General Dai Bachtiar refused to confirm or deny it.

"I can say that some suspects in the latest bombing have been arrested," he said, after meeting President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

"But I can't elaborate at this time. I will explain at the appropriate time."

Key role

Darmawan played a key planning role in the 9 September attack on the Australian Embassy, which killed 10 people including one attacker, the newspaper Kompas quoted the police source as saying.

Report said Darmawan was alsoinvolved in the Bali bombings

Police announced they were hunting for Darmawan two weeks after the embassy attack.

They said then he was believed to be on the run with the attack's alleged masterminds, Malaysian nationals Azahari bin Husin and Noordin Mohamed Top.

The Kompas report said Darmawan was arrested with five other people, but gave no more details.

It also said Darmawan was involved in the Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists, and a car-bomb attack on the JW Marriott Hotel that killed 12 people.

Police have arrested scores of suspects in three attacks, two of whom have been sentenced to death. All have been blamed on Jemaah Islamiya, a Southeast Asian group which is accused of having links to al-Qaida.